With school work starting to build up and trips under way, I have so much to write about and catch up on! First and foremost, I have finally gone to my first ‘football’ game in England. I can’t pretend that I am a follower of ‘football,’ but I will admit that the enthusiastic people in my section convinced me to become a fan for a night! One of my friends was able to find really good prices for 26 of us to go to a championship game just down the road at the Brighton and Hove Albion game.

I learned a new vocabulary of insults and chants from the locals at the game. Some of them are probably best not to mention. BUT, there were some great songs created about the coach and one of the players from Argentina. Interestingly enough they were sung to the tunes of children’s songs or songs I learned in Bible School growing up. For example:

“Carlos Garcia. He drinks Sangria. He came from Barce. To bring us joy!”

“Who’s that guy from Argentina? Who’s that guy we all adore?…

When the crowd started to sing it was an awesome atmosphere — although I could only make out the first 2 lines at the time so I wasn’t much of a singer.

Another adventure took place the following Sunday. My housemate, friend, and I discovered some cliffs about 10 miles away from Brighton. Although it is about 45 minutes by the commuter bus (this time includes 15 minutes that you have to transfer busses because the front panel falls off the first bus and it can’t continue to drive), it is free because I have a bus card. We decided to take a hike to the lookout so that we would be able to actually see the cliffs — rather than walking on the cliffs themselves. It was an awesome idea and the weather was perfect! 

We started on a pretty easy path surrounded by green fields. We saw some people coming out of a field gate, so we naturally assumed this was the way to go. Not the case — we ended up in a field of sheep! This turned out to not be so bad because there were the cutest little lambs running all over. When we made our way back to the real path, there was a fork in the road. We wanted to take the high road because the low road was flooded, yet somehow we ended up on the low road. It was a disaster: we were basically walking through a river of mud! So we turned around for the 2nd time to try to find the high road, which we finally did! Although there were some muddy spots, we made it to the lookout without much trouble. The cliffs were such an amazing sight! We took loads of pictures, although they can’t exactly do the scenery much justice. Overall, it was a great day!

In a sense, I’m glad I’m an exchange student here because I am taking the opportunity to go to places all around Brighton that some of my British housemates have never even heard of. Sometimes the best adventures come from going to places that aren’t really advertised much.

On a random side note….spring is on the way here in England. I’m so excited!

Location: United Kingdom